Together through the city traffic: TEAM develops 11 apps for collaborative mobility in Europe

Release from Tue., October 18, 2016

Today, the two day final conference of the four year European research project TEAM (Tomorrow’s Elastic Adaptive Mobility) starts in Berlin. The main result: eleven apps for road users, vehicles and traffic management centers. Among other things they provide concrete suggestions for a social and environmental friendly mobility and support traffic management centers in controlling traffic which adapt themselves dynamically to the requirements of the road users.

One person needs to get to work on time with the bus. The other would like to possibly avoid all construction sites in the city while driving by car. The student is happy if on her way to school there are fewer cars on the road. Mobility requirements are individual and situation specific and thereby always affect the total traffic. If everyone were to choose the quickest or shortest route of a conventional navigation system, the next traffic jam would be preprogrammed. So far the flexibility and the right data for a system wide optimization of mobility are missing. In the European research project TEAM (Tomorrow’s Elastic Adaptive Mobility) building blocks for a connected and collaborative mobility were developed based on which eleven apps for travelers were developed both within the vehicle as well as on the smartphone, that not only take into account the individual requirements of the traffic participants but also the requirements of the entire city and traffic controllers. The apps support the users during the entire trip: right from planning to step into public transport or the search for parking slots right up to a retrospective analysis as to how collaborative they have travelled.

Dorothee Bär, Vice Minister at the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, said in her keynote at the final conference: “One of the key tasks of our ministry is the promotion of cooperative and autonomous mobility. Digitalization comes with enormous opportunities for new forms of mobility and their interconnection. We are endeavoring to create the basis for it, for instance through standardized data provision in the mobility data marketplace and the mCLOUD. Today, data have to be accessible 24/7 even in peak load situations, for instance during storms or traffic jams. With a solid data base, specific applications can be developed. The Federal Ministry of Transport and digital Infrastructure, supports these development efforts with the mFUND. That makes our Ministry very well positioned when it comes to digital mobility. We want to support innovations in the mobility sector.”

All TEAM applications are based on a collaborative concept. In the case of the TEAM route planning, it means that the requirements of many road users are balanced and for each an individual route for an optimal total movement of traffic is suggested. The driver is free to choose between a conventional route and a collaborative one before each trip. Even if a few drivers take a detour which costs them only a few minutes, sensitive locations like schools or old age homes but also the city traffic as a whole can be relieved. Apart from applications for road users, some apps are directed towards traffic management centers. They assist for example in the temporary release of a bus lane for truck drivers and in the real-time communication to the affected vehicles.

Dr. Ilja Radusch, TEAM project coordinator and director of the business unit Smart Mobility at Fraunhofer FOKUS, explains: “Road users are not as egoistic as one might think. First acceptance studies in the project have shown that people like to do something good if they are given concrete suggestions and positive feedback. Thereby it seems insignificant if these are trips to work or leisure. Young people are motivated by the formation of a community and the embedding into a gaming environment. Others find the subsequent coaching useful wherein they receive an evaluation for each trip, how collaborative their trip was. TEAM thereby creates a greater awareness about how my personal mobility behavior influences the total traffic, without forgetting that sometimes one is in a hurry.”

The technical base for the apps is delivered by a distributed software architecture, which assumes the function of information broker in the vehicle as well as in various European cities. As required, it temporarily and decentral collects the required information i.e. traffic situation, traffic light cycles, weather, large events on a dynamic digital roadmap. On the basis of this data, suggestions will be created and displayed in real-time to the road users in the vehicles or on smartphones. For this purpose the system uses existing communication infrastructures like LTE, but also future infrastructures like Car-to-X communication or 5G. The advantage: The dynamic map is very flexible and functions throughout Europe irrespective of where the vehicle is registered. Any data can be linked without the need for central data storage. The software architecture is open so that in future other app developers can also access it.

The apps are multi-vendor capable and work across borders. Of the apps developed various ones were implemented across Europe within the framework of the EuroEcoChallenge with different focuses in the following cities: Berlin/ Germany, Turin and Trento/ Italy, Gothenburg/ Sweden, Athens and Trikala/ Greece as well as Tampere and Helsinki in Finland.

In TEAM 29 partners work together. Members are automobile manufacturers, information and communications providers, infrastructure operators as well as research organizations. The project was funded with 11.1 Million Euro in the EU 7 research framework program and supported by EUCAR, the European Council for Automotive Research & Development.